


Hidden Memories

by zombiegardener



Category: Cut & Run - Madeleine Urban & Abigail Roux
Genre: Angst, JUST, M/M, Memories, So much angst, lonlieness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-22
Updated: 2016-09-22
Packaged: 2018-08-16 17:27:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8111065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zombiegardener/pseuds/zombiegardener
Summary: Zane deals with Ty's deployment. Takes place after Touch & Geaux but before Ball & Chain.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this fic sometime after reading Touch & Geaux while waiting for Ball & Chain to come out, so it's timeline-compliant up through Touch & Geaux. Ball & Chain, not so much. Spoiler's are vague, I guess, and not possibly really that relevant.

Zane sank down onto the bed, the box clutched tightly in one hand.

It had been a hard day. Months had passed since Ty’s recall and he was mostly adjusted, but some days the emptiness of the house struck a chord, leaving behind an ache that just wouldn’t be ignored. He didn’t know what had set him off today, but he missed Ty so much it felt like he couldn’t breathe. Maybe it was because it was a week till his birthday, or maybe it was the half-remembered dreams that plagued his sleep all night. 

Although it was Saturday afternoon, he’d brought work home to finish up in an attempt to get out of the office the night before while there was still daylight. His laptop was currently opened and staring at him accusingly from the kitchen table, but the computational work couldn’t hold his interest. Ty would have probably found that hilarious. Instead, he found himself wandering aimlessly through the row house, fingers trailing over furniture, taking time to study the pictures on the walls as if he was seeing them for the first time. He’d seriously considered going to his storage unit and cleaning it out- and that was saying something, because he’d been successfully ignoring the painful mess that represented for years- but he couldn’t face it alone, and he didn’t want to bring things back with Ty gone. They’d come too far to resurrect any doubts between them, and he didn’t want to risk Ty coming home and wondering if Zane was trying to replace the present with the past. That realization made him briefly consider calling Deuce, but he backed out at the last minute. None of it would help. He was just being overly maudlin today, and everything seemed to bring his thoughts back to his lover’s conspicuous absence.

It was in a burst of almost desperate energy that he’d decided to clean the house and found the box. It was buried in the back of the bedroom closet. He had no idea how he’d missed it last spring when he’d explored every nook and cranny of the house while Ty was in New Orleans, but somehow he had. Maybe because it was hidden in plain sight, under a pile of winter things in the back of a closet he used every day. 

So here he was, on their empty bed, in their empty house, clutching an old shoebox like it held the mysteries of the universe inside. It was heavy, and reminded him quite a bit of the boxes in the armoire Ty used to squirrel memories away. This was separate though, stored away from the others, and that made it special, at least in Zane’s mind. 

He didn’t know what he expected. More mementos, hoarded but not categorized for whatever reason, or maybe junk Ty hadn’t tossed out. What he found instead were photographs.

Most of them he hadn’t seen before. The top pictures were Ty and Deuce as children, sometimes alone and sometimes surrounded by family or friends. With Earl at the mines, in the yard, hiking in the mountains, on school field trips, in Mara’s arms. Earl with a younger Burns and another man Zane assumed was Randall. There were pictures of Chester with his wife, taken when Ty was little. 

Pictures from his childhood gradually gave way to high school. Family pictures and holidays were overtaken by sporting events and proms. There was a picture of a high-school aged Ty smiling at the camera, with his arm tightly around the shoulders of another young man Zane assumed was David. It was innocent enough unless you were well versed in Ty’s body language and knew what subtext to look for underneath the veneer of friendship. That picture was followed by pictures of Ty and Earl in their Marine Corps uniforms and a letter from a Marine Corps recruitment office.

The box seemed to contain a photographic chronology of Ty’s early life, as near as he could tell. It was absolutely fascinating. You could practically follow Ty’s thought processes and life choices just from the order of the pictures.

The next set contained pictures of his time in the Marines. There was Ty and Nick at graduation from basic training. Ty leaning against a tree and glaring at the camera while Deuce balanced on crutches. Zane supposed everyone was probably just grateful there hadn’t been enough of the bike left for Ty to blow up. Those were followed by pictures from various stages of training and deployment, many with Nick. Some people came and went, and he recognized younger versions of Sidewinder as he went along. There were several series of pictures taken in the same house somewhere that Zane was fairly certain would have gotten them all arrested, if not immediately discharged. There were news articles, some in English and some not, as well as other things- menus, coasters, notes and random scraps- that probably all blended into a whole for anyone who was there.

There were large gaps in time, probably representing periods Ty didn’t want to remember. There was an obvious gap between the last of the Marine pictures and Ty’s assignment to the Baltimore field office. There were pictures of people he knew- Shannon and Elaina, Alston, Clancy, Mac, and a few others- and a lot of pictures of people he didn’t. There were pictures of the row house, empty then filling with furniture, and pictures of Sidewinder out of uniform, on Nick’s boat and in other places Zane didn’t recognize. It was like watching Ty pull his life back together after being discharged.

Then he hit the scrapbook.

He remembered it, of course. Ty had shown it to him when they’d been sent back to New York. It contained everything on the Tri-State case that Ty had been surreptitiously keeping tabs on. It was out of place in a box of happy memories, and Zane stared at it in confusion, trying to follow Ty’s train of thought. He finally opened it and flipped through, hurrying past pictures and crime reports that dredged up memories better left buried. In the back he found several folded pieces of paper. The first was a picture of Ty and a man Zane recognized as Elias Sanchez, posing in front of a large explosion and looking very proud of themselves. The second was the announcement for Sanchez’s funeral. It made Zane’s heart hurt, and he felt tears pricking his eyes both for Ty and for a man he’d never had the opportunity to meet. In the very back were several folded sheets of paper, some printed and some in Ty’s handwriting. They looked like a combination of names, phone numbers, and addresses, and it took Zane a few minutes to place them as Ty’s attempts to track him down. He stared blankly at the papers, the words blurring as his eyes watered. 

Taking a deep breath, he placed the picture and papers carefully back in the scrapbook and glanced into the bottom of the box. More pictures, many of them of him and Ty or him alone. He didn’t know where Ty had found some of them, but they spanned the whole of their almost two years together before Ty had been recalled. There were a few other things: family pictures, Amelia’s birth announcement, news articles, and a few other random things that Zane couldn’t identify. But so much of it revolved around him, around _them_ and their life together. He suddenly he couldn’t take it anymore and the tears came in earnest. He dropped everything back in the box and carefully closed it, placing it back in its hiding spot in the closet, covering it up as if it had never been disturbed.

He didn’t know why; he was sure Ty wouldn’t care. But still he carefully rearranged clothes and shut the closet door tightly, suddenly unable to shake the belief that as long as the box was there, undisturbed, Ty had to come home and finish it. And that thought was more like Ty than him, so much so that he could practically hear his lover’s voice and see the earnest expression on his face as he tried to explain it, knowing Zane would think he was nuts.

He ran down the steps to the kitchen, swiping the persistent tear tracks off his cheeks with a shirt sleeve. He ignored his laptop, not in the mood to seek solace in the ordered and predictable world of reports and statistics. Instead, he grabbed his jacket, helmet, and keys and headed outside. He had no idea where he was going. He just knew that right now he couldn’t be here.

**Author's Note:**

> I was listening to Get Through This by Art of Dying when I came up with this idea. This song got me through writing my dissertation and training for runs like the Warrior Dash. It came on when I was going for a morning run and I got this. I wrote it because the image wouldn’t leave me the heck alone. 
> 
> I'm slowing trying to post both older stuff and new stuff, but it's going to take me a while because I need another 5000 hours in a day to get shit done. Most of my Cut & Run fics can be found on my tumblr, which I update sporadically: http://zombiegardener.tumblr.com/


End file.
